Luke 16

1. AND he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man which had a stew- 2 ard; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stew- 3 ardship: for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; 4 to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stew- 5 ardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord’s 6 debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down 7 quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and

8 write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. 9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; 10 that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is 11 unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, 12 who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in 13 that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 14 And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided 15 him. And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in 16 the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the 17 kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for 18 heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery.

As the unjust steward secures the favor of the debtors by gratuities, in order to make sure of a home for himself when his office is taken away, so the children of light, by the right use of earthly possessions, are to make for themselves friends who will receive them into everlasting mansions when they are called away from this life. As the children of the world aim steadily at their selfish objects, and, with ever-watchful prudence, seize upon all the means necessary to secure them, so the children of light are to keep constantly before their eyes the relations of life to the divine kingdom, and to press everything into their service in its behalf. It is, indeed, a difficult task to combine the singleness of aim and simplicity of heart which the gospel requires with that shrewd sagacity which can bend all earthly things to its holy purposes. Yet if the aim to serve God’s kingdom be the ruling power of one’s life, and all the manifold interests of life are made subordinate thereto; if the holy decision be once made and never swerved from, it will bring forth, as one of its necessary fruits, this true sagacity and moral presence of mind. It is precisely this connection of prudence with a single, steadfast aim, though a bad one, that is illustrated in the conduct of the unjust steward. A bad man was necessarily chosen for the example; its very object was to show how much the children of light might do for the kingdom of God, if they would, in this respect, imitate the children of the world. N.

WHAT makes these parables so impressive and pathetic is the fact that they incarnate spiritual truths and realities, show them to us in men of like passions with ourselves; and thus, not only bring them to the level of our thoughts, but make them a thousand-fold more attractive. If, instead of parables, we had fables of talking beasts and birds, their charm would be quite gone.

1-3. Wasted his master’s goods. He had been negligent and luxurious; and so had fallen into that most common of all dishonesties which, because it breaks into no man’s house, or steals no man’s purse, has no notion that it is dishonest. I cannot dig, etc. Luxury had unfitted him for toil; alms would choke his pride. S. Coz. —Wanting everything, it is a double poverty to be able to do nothing, and to be willing to ask nothing. Q.

4-7. As steward to an Oriental landlord, it was his duty to admit and dismiss tenants; to value their land and its produce; to fix, collect, and sell their rents; for in the East, then, as often now, rents were paid in kind, not in money. If an olive-yard yielded a thousand measures of oil annually, a certain proportion, say a tenth, was paid to the landlord. In that case the rent was a hundred measures of oil. If a farm yielded a thousand bushels of wheat, the rent would be a hundred bushels. The steward had to fix the value of the crop, to see that the due proportion of it was paid as rent, to sell what produce was not needed for the supply of the household, and to pay in the cash received for it. S. Cox.—The steward here made use of this power to purchase the good-will and friendship of his lord’s tenants. Whereas one had bound himself to pay yearly a hundred baths of oil, he let him have it at fifty: and whereas another was to pay a hundred homers of wheat yearly, he gave him his lease at eighty, and altered the writings accordingly. This interpretation of the parable may be gathered not only from the nature of the thing, but from the proper sense of the words debtor and bill; the one signifying any kind of debtor, and among the rest a tenant, and the other any kind of obligatory writing, and among the rest a lease. In this light the favor that was done to the tenants was substantial, and laid them under lasting obligations; whereas according to the common interpretation, the steward could not reap as much benefit from any requital the debtors would make him for the sums forgiven them, as these sums were worth to himself; and therefore he might rather have exacted them, and put them into his own pocket. M.

Mark the audacity, yet ability, of the fraud. The steward had hitherto, through wasteful luxury perhaps, paid the landlord less than the estate produced. He has now to send in his accounts and vouchers, and run the risk of having his malversation exposed. But by falsifying his accounts, by lowering the rents, he keeps the revenue of the estate at the same low mark, and has a chance of persuading his master that the estate was never worth more, and escaping the worst risks of detection. On the other hand, these bills, or documents, which he handed to the tenants, and which would be at least the basis of any future estimate of rents, would, perhaps for years, secure them a considerable saving, and incline them to deal generously with him. By accepting his fraudulent valuations, too, they became parties to the fraud; henceforth, if their generosity failed, he had them in his power. So, by one stroke, he did much both to conceal his former delinquencies, and to secure a provision for his future necessities. S. Cox.—Everybody [in Palestine] trades, speculates, cheats. The shepherd-boy on the mountains talks of piastres from morning to night; so does the muleteer on the road, the farmer in the field, the artisan in his shop, the merchant in his magazine, the pasha in his palace, the kady in the hall of judgment, the mullah in the mosque, the monk, the priest, the bishop—money, money, money! the desire of every heart, the theme of every discourse, the end of every aim. Everything, too, is bought and sold. Each prayer has its price, every sin its tariff. Nothing for nothing, but everything for money—at the counter of the merchant, the divan of the judge, the gate of the palace, the altar of the priest. W. M. T.

8. It is the lord of the steward, he who has twice before in the parable been called by this name (verses 3, 5), that is here meant, and not our Lord, who does not speak directly in his own person till verse 9. T.—The steward is not only expressly called “unjust,” but his injustice was branded by his dismissal. What his master praised was his wisdom and foresight, his subtle and ingenious management in securing to himself friends. He punished his dishonesty, but acknowledged his art and cunning. Newcome.—"Wisely" may not be the happiest word, since wisdom is never in Scripture disconnected from moral goodness. “Prudently” is the word that should have been chosen. “The children of this world are wiser in their generation” (in worldly matters) “than the children of light” in theirs, that is, in heavenly matters; the children of light being thus rebuked that they are not at half the pains to win heaven which the men of this world are to win earth—that they are less provident in heavenly things than those are in earthly—that the world is better served by its servants than God is by his. T.—The children of this world have, for the most part, a steady regard to the end which they pursue; they are wise in choosing proper means, and finding out the nearest way to compass their end; they are vigilant and active, constant and resolute in their pursuits. On the other hand, the children of light sometimes quite overlook and forget their great concern, have intervals of remissness and indifference, are easily deterred and unsettled, and drawn aside by every impediment and discouragement. Jortin.

9. The man’s deed has two sides on which it may be contemplated—one, the side of its dishonesty, upon which it is most blameworthy; the other, the side of its prudence, its foresight. Our Lord distinguishes the steward’s dishonesty from his prudence: the one can only have his rebuke—the other may be extolled for the purpose of provoking his people to a like prudence about things of far higher importance. T.—The point held up for imitation in the steward is not his injustice and extravagance, but the foresight with which he anticipated, and the skill with which he provided against, his ultimate difficulties. What can be clearer than the very simple deductions? This steward, having been a bad steward, showed diligence, steady purpose, and clear sagacity in his dishonest plan for extricating himself from the consequences of past dishonesty: be ye faithful stewards, and show the same diligence, purpose, sagacity, in subordinating the present and the temporal to the requirements of the eternal and the future. Just as the steward made himself friends of the tenants, who, when his income failed, received him into their houses, so do ye use your wealth—and time, opportunity, knowledge, is wealth, as well as money—for the good of your fellow-men; that when you leave earth poor and naked, these fellow-men may welcome you to treasures that never fail. The parables of the unjust judge and the importunate suitor show quite as clearly as this parable that the lesson conveyed by a parable may be enforced by principles of contrast, and may involve no commendation of those whose conduct conveys the lesson. F.—The heavenly habitations being termed “everlasting,” are thus tacitly contrasted with the temporary shelter which was all that the steward, the child of the present world, procured for himself with all his plotting and dishonesty. T.—The wisdom of this world’s children is only a wisdom for this world. Measure their conduct on the scale of their own generation, and you say, “These are capable, sagacious men.” But measure it on the scale of eternity, that is, on the scale of their whole life, and you add, “What fools and blind they are, after all!” Their thoughts and their gains perish with them. S. Cox.

9–11. Mammon, coming from the Hebrew, signifies whatever one is apt to confide in; and because men put their trust generally in external advantages, as riches, authority, honor, knowledge, the word mammon is used to denote everything of that kind, and particularly riches by way of eminence. By the mammon of unrighteousness he does not mean unrighteous or ill-gotten riches, but false and uncertain riches. So in verse 11, “unrighteous” means false, deceitful, as opposed to “true.” M.

10–13. The things earthly, by which men may show their faithfulness and fitness for a higher stewardship, are slightly called “that which is least,” as compared with spiritual gifts and graces which are “much,” they are termed “unrighteous,” or deceitful, “mammon,” as set against the heavenly riches of faith and love, which are “true” and durable “riches,” they are called “that which is another man’s,” by comparison with the heavenly goods, which when possessed are our own. T.—The faithfulness in the least is the same as the prudence and shrewdness just spoken of: in the case of the children of light they run into—“who is that faithful and wise steward?” That which is least, is the deceitful mammon; that which is another man’s, is the wealth of this present world, which is not the Christian’s own, nor his proper inheritance. The “much,” the “true riches,” is that which is your own, the true riches of God’s inheritance. The wealth of this world is “another’s,” forfeited by sin—only put into our hands to be rendered an account of. A.—Wealth, if bestowed, is the gift of a power from God that may be made glorious by right use. But a right use, a Christian use, will never be made of it till its true relations to other and higher forces of power in the

Church are rightly understood. Riches pass “like a flower of the field,” in precious but brief trust, given not for pride or elation, but for Christian use. Character is power for eternity, has the beauty and life of its divine spirit on it. As productive of this power in the possessor or others, wealth turns to value. Used for selfish ends, it will bring shame and sorrow here and in the day of God. A Christian use glorifies God, and glorifies the soul; and prepares friends that, when the possessor shall “fail,” and go alone to “the eternal mansions,” “shall receive him to everlasting habitations.” Post.

10. Faithful in that which is least.** True faithfulness knows no distinction between great and small duties. From the highest point of view, that is, from God’s point of view, nothing is great, nothing small, as we measure it. The worth and the quality of an action depend on its motive only, and not at all on its prominence, or on any other of the accidents which we are always apt to adopt as the tests of the greatness of our deeds. The largeness of the consequences of anything that we do is no measure of the true greatness or true value of it. Nothing is small that a spirit can do. Nothing is small that can be done from a mighty motive. The least action of life can be as surely done from the loftiest motive, as the highest and the noblest. Faithfulness measures acts as God measures them. True conscientiousness deals with our duties as God deals with them. McLaren.

Verse 13 then teaches that the only way of attaining to this faithfulness in little things, which qualifies us for what is great, is by a total renunciation of mammon, and by a surrender of the heart to God. C. B.—It was impossible—such was the recurrent burden of so many discourses—to be at once worldly and spiritual; to be at once the slave of God and the slave of mammon. F.—It is clear that this passage (placed out of its connection in M. 6 : 24) stands properly here, closely joined to the parable; and, indeed, requisite to set the idea of the parable in its proper light. The principal scope of the latter is to show the connection between wisdom and a steadfast aim of life; and this passage (verse 13) contains precisely the same thought; as it teaches that we cannot rightly use our earthly goods unless we make our choice decidedly between God and the world, and then, with undivided aim, refer all things to the one Master to whom we have consecrated our whole life. N.

It has been said that the difference between one man and another is in their choice of their masters. Some master every human being has, and none are in so complete a bondage as those who fancy themselves to be absolutely independent. There are as many masters as there are interests, appetites, tastes, passions, and pursuits—of the body and the mind. There are people who scorn the idea of working at all, who yet work harder, put up with more humiliations, and part with more real liberty, for vanity, for fashion, for a certain standing in society or a certain amount of prosperity, or a sensual pleasure, than the serf that is bought and sold and whipped. So it appears that men are always choosing their masters. Every heart chooses. Every life is the result of that choice. We may go on choosing and choosing again, trying many masters. Every passion and appetite and interest may take its turn in playing master. We may fancy we make some progress, because we change, when really the selfish principle, the root of all the evil, is just as vital, and as bitter and poisonous in its vitality, as ever, under all the refinements of culture and manners. The external habits may become more orderly and decent; the tastes less gross; the results of labor more useful to others. But God is not mocked, and we must not deceive ourselves. Changing our masters is of no avail till we exchange every other for God. Hence it is that the Bible always treats the false masters of the soul as altogether but one: “He that is not for Christ is against him,” it says. So it presents but one alternative. “No man can serve two masters.” F. D. H.

14. Covetous . . . . derided him.** Sneered at him; their master-sin being too plainly struck at for them to relish. B.—16-18. That dispensation of which they were administrators was passing away; and a larger dispensation, in which they shall no more have the “key of knowledge” to admit or to exclude, is begun. Yet not that the law itself was to be abolished, for that would be eternal as the God that gave it (verse 17), being the expression of his perfections and holy will. How great then was their guilt, who, while they pretended to be guardians of its purity, were continually tampering with it in its most sacred enactments, as in those concerning marriage (verse 18). T.

17. Of the law to fail.** The Lord Jesus Christ, as the principal part of his prophetic function, came to confirm the whole law of God, by an ampler revelation, a more authoritative commission, a more perfect example, a more impressive evidence. Elsewhere he declares that heaven and earth shall pass away sooner than his word; while here he proclaims that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than one tittle of the law to fail. Thus he identifies his word and the Law of God, in a common authority and a common perpetuity. W. A. B.

Section 107.—The Rich Man and Lazarus.

19. THERE was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared 20 sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid 21 at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich 22 man’s table: moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man 23 also died, and was buried: and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and 24 seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried, and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in 25 water, and cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil 26 things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you, 27 cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray 28 thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. 29, 30 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will re- 31 pent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

THIS impressive parable, one of the most awful sayings of our Lord, was but a momentary unveiling of the spirit-world and the state of the departed; yet it has left for all after-ages the impress of these momentous truths. Directly consequent upon death is a state of consciousness, in which the soul remembers the past, and knows its own condition and its prospects. There are two opposite states—the one of happiness, the other of misery—to which men are allotted according to their character and conduct in this life. These two conditions are immensely and irrevocably separated. The blessed can do nothing for the alleviation of the miserable; nor can the lost ever hope to reach the abode of the saved. The parable does not propose to remedy in the hereafter any inequalities of condition in the present state, but to compensate for losses here in the body by the superlative gain to the soul that lives unto God. How mean, how wretched, the lot of one who revels in sensual abundance, but has nothing for the soul! J. P. T.

He who believes not in an invisible world of righteousness and truth and spiritual joy, must of necessity place his hope in the things which he sees, will come to trust in them, and to look to them for his blessedness, for he knows of no other: whether he hoards or squanders, in either case he sets his hope on the world. This was the sin of Dives and the origin of all his other sins, that he believed not in this higher world, which is apprehended by faith—a world not merely beyond the grave—but a kingdom of God, a kingdom of truth and love existing even in the midst of this cruel and wicked world; and his punishment was, that he made the discovery of the existence of that truer state of things only to his own unutterable and irremediable loss. T.

19. The extreme costliness of the purple dye of antiquity is well known. And the byssus, rightly translated “fine linen,” was hardly in less price or esteem, so that he plainly sought out for himself all that was costliest and rarest. This was his ordinary apparel; so his sumptuous fare was his every day’s entertainment. And what was his crime? A lazar lying at his gate, and lying unrelieved. Nor is he even accused of being, as he is sometimes called, “a glutton.” On the contrary, he is one of whom none could say worse than that he loved to surround himself with all things pleasurable. His name Christ has not told us, but the poor man’s only. “Seems he not to you,” asks Augustine, “to have been reading from that book where he found the name of the poor man written, but found not the name of the rich; for that book is the book of life?” T.

20,21. Was laid at his gate.** Three circumstances aggravate the rich man’s uncharitableness; the object was presented to him at his very gate; such an object as would have moved any one’s pity, a fellow-creature reduced to extreme misery and necessity; and a very little relief would have contented him. Tillotson.—Man neglected his fellow-man, beheld his sufferings with a careless eye and an unmoved heart, yet was it a misery which even the beasts had pity on, so that what little they could they did to alleviate his sufferings. We have in fact in the two descriptions stroke for stroke. Dives is covered with purple and fine linen; Lazarus is covered only with sores. The one fares sumptuously, the other desires to be fed with crumbs. The one has numerous attendants to wait on his least caprice, the other only dogs to tend his sores. T.—Lazarus lay at the rich man’s gate, neglected by all, and receiving kindness only from the brutes. He is depicted, not merely as poor and afflicted, but likewise as very patient. He neither upbraided the rich man for his treatment, nor murmured against God. We must notice this especially, or we shall be led into the erroneous belief that the poor man, for the sake of his poverty, and apart from the disposition with which he endures it, has a claim upon heaven, or that the rich, on account of his riches, and apart from the use he makes of them, will have hell for his reversion. C. B.

22. The beggar died.** He died, and how mighty the change! he whom but a moment before no man served, whom none but the dogs cared for, is tended of angels, is carried by them into the blessedness prepared for him. Into Abraham’s bosom. The Jews spoke of all true believers as going to Abraham. To be in Abraham’s bosom was equivalent to being in “the garden of Eden.” It is the “Paradise” of Luke 23 : 43, the place of the souls under the altar (Rev. 6 : 9); it is, as some distinguish it, blessedness, but not glory. Hither, to this haven of rest and consolation, Lazarus, after all his troubles, was safely borne. The rich man was buried. There is a sublime irony in this mention of his burial, connected as it is with what is immediately to follow. No doubt we are meant to infer that he had a funeral according to the most approved pomp of the world; this splendid carrying to the grave is for him what the carrying into Abraham’s bosom was for Lazarus—it is his equivalent, which, however, profits him but little where now he is. T.—Here, too, we must not understand the meaning to be, that temporal welfare of itself excludes from heaven, and that temporal misery, on the other hand, is sufficient to constitute a right of admission. The teaching of the parable is, that such a frame of mind as seeks mere temporal pleasure leads to hell; whereas that which inclines obediently to the path, often rough and painful, of God’s appointment, conducts eventually to his rest. C. B.

23. In hell.** Hades in the Greek signifies an invisible place, and is used to express the place of separate souls at large, as well of the good as the bad. And in this sense is hades in the Greek (and where translated hell in the English) to be taken; i. e., for the place of souls in general, where they wait for their last and final state at the resurrection hereafter. It is true indeed, the parable shows that the rich man was placed among the unhappy souls: but this appears not from his being in hades, but from his being in torments: for even Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom was also in hades, only in a different state or region of it: Lazarus in a state of rest and repose, the rich man in a state of anguish and despair; Lazarus even in immediate and present bliss, the rich man even in present and immediate torments. Wheatly.

24. I am tormented in this flame.** The torments of the wicked are usually described to us in Scripture by one of the sharpest and quickest pains with which human nature is acquainted: that of burning. All that we need infer from these descriptions is, that the sufferings of wicked men will be as great and severe, and probably greater than can possibly be described to us by anything we know: for who knows the power of God’s anger, and the utmost of what Omnipotent justice can do? Tillotson.—And he cried, Father Abraham. Still clinging to the hope that his descent from Abraham, his fleshly privileges, will profit him something. Nor does Abraham deny the relationship, for he addresses him not as a stranger but a son, yet thus, in the very allowance of the relationship, coupled with the refusal of the request, rings the knell of his latest hope. In this prayer of the rich man we have the only invocation of saints in Scripture, and certainly not a very encouraging one. T.

25. The key to the parable. This rich man, instead of making friends of his riches, using them for God’s glory as a faithful and wise steward, has just taken them as his own, until, called to give account, he is found guilty and condemned. D. K. D.—Thy lifetime. The wisdom of God has judged one world enough for one man, though it gives him his choice of two. Receivedst thy good things. His they are called emphatically, his by peculiar choice. They were the things he chiefly valued, and pitched upon as the most likely to make him happy. Having enjoyed them, and actually compassed the utmost of his desires, his happiness was at an end. He had had his option; and there was no further provision for him in the other world: nor indeed was it possible that he should find any, where he had laid up none. Only where men sow may they expect to reap; it being infinitely absurd to bury their seed in the earth, and to expect a crop in heaven. R. S.

From this and other parts of the parable it is plain, that our Lord’s principal view in this whole discourse was to warn men of the danger of that total intentness on present pleasure, which is not so much a particular vice, as the foundation of all vices. It is this which makes men regardless of futurity, and without God in all their thoughts. It is this which exposes men to temptations of every kind, and makes them continually sacrifice the interests of truth and virtue whenever they come in competition with the good things of this life, on which alone their heart is set. S. C.—Wealth is to be regarded not as of necessity excluding humility, but only as a great hinderance and temptation; for the very Abraham into whose bosom Lazarus was carried, was one who had been on earth rich in flocks, and in herds, and in all possessions. . . . But the receiving of this world’s good without any portion of its evil, the course of an unbroken prosperity, is ever an augury of ultimate reprobation. Nor is the reason of this hard to perceive; for that dross which has need to be purged out can only be purged out by the fire of pain and affliction. Thus Dives, to his endless loss, had in this life received good things without any share of evil. But now all is changed: Lazarus, who received in this mortal life evil things, is comforted, but Dives is tormented.

26. A great gulf fixed.** Not a mere handbreadth only, as the Jews fabled, but “a great gulf,” and not merely there, but “fixed” there—an eternal separation, a yawning chasm, too deep to be filled up, too wide to be bridged over. Christ moves in that world as with a perfect familiarity, speaking without astonishment as of things which he knows. T.

29. Moses and the prophets.** A remarkable testimony from Christ himself that the canon of the Old Testament is what it was believed by the Jews to be, the word of God, speaking by Moses and the prophets; and that it had been preserved by the Jewish Church to our Lord’s age (whence it has come down to our own) in purity and integrity; that it is genuine, authentic, and divine; and that they who will not receive it as such are in so hardened a state that they would not be persuaded though one rose from the dead. It is here intimated also, that men come into the “torment” of Hades, as Dives did, because they will not hear the Old Testament Scriptures. What, then, will be the condition of those who refuse to hear Christ and the apostles speaking in the New? W.

31. Though one rose from the dead.** The unbelieving Jews themselves became a signal instance of this; who withstood all the miracles of Christ, even that greatest of all, his resurrection from the dead, no less than they had done the ordinary preaching of the prophets. S. C.—Where unbelief proceeds, as frequently it does, from a vitiated mind, which hates to be reformed; which rejects the evidence because it will not admit the doctrine; in such a case, all proofs will be alike, and it will be lost labor to afford new evidence, since it is not the want of evidence that causes the unbelief. Bp. Sherlock.

27-31. What may be called the epilogue of this parable contains a lesson more solemn still—namely, that the means of grace which God’s mercy accords to every living soul are ample for its enlightenment and deliverance; that if these be neglected, no miracle will be wrought to startle the absorbed soul from its worldly interests. “We are saved,” says Bengel, “by faithful hearing, not by ghosts.” F.—The rich man’s unbelief shows itself again in his supposing that his brethren would give heed to a ghost, while they refused to give heed to the sure word of God—to Moses and the prophets. For it is of the very essence of unbelief, that it gives that credence to portents and prodigies which it refuses to the truth of God. We have here reappearing in hell that “Show us a sign that we may believe,” which was so often on the lips of the Pharisees on earth. They believe, or at least think they would believe, signs and portents, but will not believe God’s word. Dives had said, “they will repent;” Abraham replies, they will not even “be per-

suaded.” Dives had said, “if one went unto them from the dead;” Abraham, with a prophetic glance at the world’s unbelief in a far greater matter, makes answer, “No, not if one rose from the dead.” This reply of Abraham’s is most weighty for the insight it gives us into the nature of faith, that it is an act of the will and the affections no less than of the understanding, something therefore which cannot be forced by signs and miracles: for where there is a determined alienation of the will and affections from the truth, no impression which these miracles make, even if allowed to be genuine, will be more than transitory. When the historical Lazarus was raised from the dead, the Pharisees were not by this miracle persuaded of the divine mission and authority of Christ, and yet they did not deny the reality of the miracle itself. A greater, too, than Lazarus has returned from the world of spirits; nay, has arisen from the dead; and yet what multitudes who acknowledge the fact, and acknowledge it as setting a seal to all his claims to be heard and obeyed, yet are not brought by this acknowledgment at all nearer to repentance and the obedience of faith! It is very observable how exactly in the spirit of Abraham’s refusal to send Lazarus the Lord himself acted after his resurrection. He showed himself, not to the Pharisees, not to his enemies, “not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God” (Acts 10: 41), to his own disciples alone. T.

Section 108.—A Forgiving, Believing, and Serving Spirit.

Perea.